Wednesday, June 08, 2011

Grumpy Old Woman

I'm old and cranky. I'm a 34 year old curmudgeon. For one thing, I have a very vocal 2 year old. He narrates everything; it's just who he is. He runs up all the time to tell me what's happening in his movie, or in his book, or to explain to me what the toys are doing while he's playing with them. And when he isn't telling me what the toys are doing, he's talking for them, or making Vroom! noises, or laughing. I also have a ten month old who has learned to make Big! Loud! Noises! and who exercises that ability all the time. He squeals, or laughs, and occasionally yells "Na!" for no reason. My children are happy, but I get headaches, headaches that last for days.

And since I am a woman and a mother, I am inexplicably expected to be supportive. Supportive I can do, if I feel it. I can support you going to school, or getting married, or redecorating your house. But the theory that I'm supposed to support everything you do no matter what is where my headache and my loud children and my unending exhaustion draw the line. I will bite my tongue. I will refuse to say anything if I can't say anything nice. But I won't light up and congratulate you or tell you the predictable tragedy was unforeseeable, or pat you on the shoulder and tell you something wasn't your fault when it totally was.

How to feed a baby is a choice, and you can make whatever damn choice you want. But when I hear that a woman is so worried about her baby daughter because she's having issues with her formula and now they're going to try soy formula but the Dr doesn't think it will help and they're going to have to go with a super expensive brand of specialty stuff, I think "No! You don't say! Really, synthetic chemicals don't agree with your newborn baby's tummy? How can that be?" Look, formula is made for babies, but babies aren't made for formula. If you feed your kid the equivalent of a crushed up prenatal vitamin in milk, and the baby reacts poorly, it is 100% your fault! And I just can't pull off the "Oh no, that's terrible. I hope you find something that works soon." sympathy angle because you should have given her MILK int he first place. It sucks that the fake shit works for most babies but not yours, but you could have taken into account the chance that the fake shit wouldn't work for your kid before you decided to use the fake shit in the first place. Your lack of research is the reason you now how to pay out the ass for the expensive specialty formula.

"We had to bury our dog back in January and so just last month we went and let the kids pick out a puppy and everyone really loved her and yesterday I accidentally backed over her and killed her. I feel so terrible and I can't stop crying." Why is the response to this always "Don't beat yourself up over it, it was an accident," and never, "Why the hell wasn't the dog fenced in or on a leash instead of behind your tire?" Dogs aren't wild animals; they're domesticated pets. Domestication makes animals stupid. You cannot take a creature that has had the survival instincts bred out of it for a dozen generations and let it roam free, and then act shocked when it wanders into the path of a car. You also can't blame the driver when your farm dog runs into the road and gets creamed. Don't want your dog scraped off the blacktop, invest in a chain.

"I can't believe people refuse to spell my daughter's name right! At the doctor's, at school, even family members can't keep it straight. It's not that hard! It's Mikayleh, just like it sounds!" Then name the girl Sue. If you give your baby a confusing or complicated name, expect it to confuse or complicate people and situations. I named my daughter Ryan and I don't get all huffy when the receptionist at the doctor's office says "he". I brought it on myself.

People who play passive aggressive games piss me off too. My neighbor loves to say, "Wow, it;'s about time you get that boy a haircut, isn't it? People are going to start asking how old she is." And if I didn't have to live next to this guy, I'd respond with, "Oh hahahahahah! I see what you did! That's hilarious! You connected his hair with his penis and then implied that bangs equal vagina. That's soooo clever! Hahahahah." But I don't. I just look pointedly at his saggy old fat man boobs and agree that yes, sometimes we have secondary sex characteristics that don't jibe with our gender, but that I like his hair the way it is.

I have opinions. Most of my opinions I have because I formed them. I formed them based on the information at hand, and until I'm given conflicting information strong enough to change my mind, they will continue to be my opinions. Apparently some people form opinions on a whim, based entirely on what will piss people off the most. I say this because I have a friend who will argue with me for hours and then tell me later, "Oh I didn't really believe that. I was just playing devil's advocate, just for the debate." I honestly do not know for how much longer this woman will be my friend. She seems to have no conviction, and she loves to make my scream.